An opinion poll conducted by the STEM agency in February of this year shows
that trust in EU institutions has dropped to an all-time low, sliding from
60 percent in 2009 to a mere 34 percent this year. The dramatic slump in
support comes at a time when the new center-left government has announced a
change of course –vowing to bring the Czech Republic back to the EU
mainstream. I spoke to the head of the STEM agency Jan Hartl about what’s
behind the loss of trust and what are the present pro-EU government’s
chances of turning around Czechs’ increasingly skeptical outlook.

Photo: European Commission
“We can observe that in the past 20 years the attitude of the Czech
population to the EU was relatively stable and it was somewhere between 55
and 60 percent until the year 2009 when the Czech Republic held the EU
presidency. Trust in the EU was then at 60 percent. Since that time there
have been two main factors leading to a decrease of trust in the EU. One of
the reasons (for the declining trust rating) is that the issues of the
European Union have been neglected by the majority of Czech politicians and
political parties. The prevailing mainstream in the Czech Republic was
stressing national values, self-protecting attitudes and there was no real,
so to say, passionate supporter of the EU on the domestic political scene.
And the second reason is the fact that the public realized with the
financial crisis in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain that the EU was beset
by many problems and more or less did not know how to tackle them
effectively. Those two factors – the attitude of Czech politicians and
the economic crisis in Europe –are the reason for the gradual decrease in
support ever since 2009. And it has been a dramatic decrease from 60
percent to 34.”

Do you think that people do not have enough information –that they do
not see the benefits of EU membership but also know little about how EU
institutions work?

“Well, they do not know much about the workings of the European Union,
how the EU operates and so on. They have been given this general idea that
the EU is an institution that helps the Czech Republic and that our
membership is profitable and beneficial, but the problem is that no one
really stresses the positive outcomes of EU membership specifically. One
must also blame the media. Whenever there is talk of the EU it is always
with a negative connotation -something did not work well, there were
shortcomings of this and that sort. This negative context makes people look
at the EU as something ineffective, something that is very difficult to
understand and even something which is perceived more or less as
suspicious. It is also linked to the fact that not many people travel
abroad, not many people speak foreign languages –that’s the general
framework. But I would blame our politicians that they don’t place the EU
and European issues at the center of their focus. Perhaps it is going to
change with the new administration.”

Yes, the new government has effected a U-turn on EU policy, it says it
wants to bring the Czech Republic back to the EU mainstream, to take a
constructive view of EU integration… what can it do to change the
attitude of the public?

Jan Hartl, photo: Noemi Holeková
“What it needs is for the EU to be mentioned in the media and in the
speeches of politicians not only in negative circumstances but also as a
positive goal. Only now are we reopening a debate about our role in the EU.
And you can see that the attitudes of the Czech public and the Slovak
public are very different and that is because the euro and the sense of
belonging to the EU has a very high symbolic value and the Czech Republic
pretends that we don’t need the euro and we don’t need any European
issues at all. And if you look at the time it took for the public to
gradually lose trust in EU institutions – which was a five year period
– I think we can say that if the government does well in promoting the EU
then with an optimistic outlook we can expect it to take another five years
for the level of trust to return to where it was in 2009.”

Would you say that this is a victory for Eurosceptics here in the Czech
Republic?

“Not really, because people are somewhat reserved to the EU. It is not a
question of them refusing the EU or hating the EU –they are somewhat
suspicious that the EU does some things which are not beneficial to our
country. But if you look at the support anti-European politicians have you
will see that it is very low, one would even say it is marginal. So one
would say that the decrease in support for the EU is also a matter of
intensity of that skeptical attitude and when the slump in support is not
reflected in large groups of the population voting for Eurosceptics in the
elections then this shows that the public is hesitant about the role of the
EU in our politics and it is up to our politicians to work with that.”

Have you been able to break down people’s sentiments –positive and
negative –about the EU? Are you able to say what they don’t like about
the EU and what is positive about the EU - are we talking about the fact
that they don’t like EU regulations….?

“Yes that is true, they see many of these regulations as unsubstantiated
pressure from outside, with no proper reason for it. And they see it as
something that is not open to the public and not understandable. Part of
the problem lies within the EU itself - in its ability (or lack of) to
communicate its goals to the public –not just to the Czech public but to
people in all EU member states. It is a well-known fact that the agenda of
the EU is not very well comprehensible to the European public in
general.”

Is there anything at all that the majority of Czechs appreciate about EU
membership? Is there anything positive that you could name?

Photo: Štěpánka Budková
“Well, one thing that is undisputable is that the EU is helping to
increase the standard of living and material conditions of people through
its European funds. This is a positively perceived factor. And another
indirect benefit of EU membership is the fact that there is indirect
pressure on our politicians to fight against corruption and to foster the
norms of a decent life and institutional behavior so as the country can get
out of the trap of the legacy of communism and to adopt the accepted
Western standards.”

Is there a generation gap in how Czechs see the EU?

“Yes, indeed. Young, educated people support the EU considerably more
than older people. Older people are more skeptical and they are less
familiar with what is happening in the European Union.”